The world of logistics is a never ending challenge of improving efficiency and reducing cost. The largest costs are associated with human labor and storage capacity. In the early 1980s automation based solutions began to be implemented in the logistics arena. Since then these solutions have greatly improved, dramatically reducing operational costs and improving productivity. The caveat is that these automatic solutions come at a great expense in facility and equipment, making these types of solutions available only to companies who can afford the cost and sustain the ROI.
This problem is more critical for small and medium size warehouses (SMWs) which are based on human labor. These businesses are burdened with escalating labor cost, increased demand for delivery times, limited working hours, process control difficulties leading to uneven output, employee turnover requiring a costly training process, season to season volatility, and human errors.
An automatic warehouse solution would provide an answer to many of these issues. However, there are many constraints that are preventing SMWs from implementing current solutions, including:                1. The requirement of a large capital equipment investment.        2. Poor modularity—Prior art automatic solutions require rigorous space and functionality design prior to initialization. For example, if a business needs to reorganize the warehouse area/facility, it requires a very large effort to relocate a crane which runs on specific rails in a specific pit inside the floor.        3. Downtime—Prior art automatic solutions for warehouse management require 3-12 months of “sterile environment” with no disruptions in order to be implemented. That means a business needs to add the cost of either:                    Moving its operation to a temporary facility while implementing; or            In case of relocation, moving the operation to new location only after implementation; or            Shutting down the business for the time of implementation.                        4. Limited flexibility—Most of the prior art systems are designed to a specific output rate in pre-set conditions and products/containers. Thus the systems cannot cope when it is desired to take on a new customer with different size/shape/weight of products/containers. Most prior art systems are not designed to change their output rate dramatically, thus these systems cannot cope with peak times where a business needs to temporary increase its output.        5. No gradual implementation capability—Most prior art systems require major structural changes in the facility and infrastructures, which means that implementation requires 100% overhaul of an existing warehouse right from the starting gate.        6. Redundancy capability—In most prior art automated solutions to warehouse management failure in a part of the system will stop all operations until the failure is overcome. This situation can be covered in large warehouses with a few locations and overlapping stock, but the meaning of a failure of this nature for a small business with a single warehouse is crucial.        
The result of all of these constraints is that virtually the entire SMW logistics sub-segment of the warehouse industry does not have an automatic solution.
It is therefore a purpose of the present invention to provide an automatic warehouse system that is suitable for small and medium sized warehouses.
It is another purpose of the present invention to provide an automatic warehouse system that can be relatively inexpensively and easily added to existing warehouses operated by businesses.
Further purposes and advantages of this invention will appear as the description proceeds.